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MA82S2 - Desire, time and thought are the basic elements of fear
Madras (Chennai), India - 6 January 1982
Seminar 2



0:19 K: May I start the ball rolling? Yesterday, we were saying that when a human being is the past, the present and the future, he is time-bound. He invents his own time. He is the result of all human endeavour. We said yesterday, he’s like the tide that goes out and comes in. This is a perpetual motion in which he is caught. And I think we should talk over together whether this movement of the outer and the inner, interrelated, really radically, not separate, like water going out and coming back, whether that movement has ever a stop, or must it always continue? What is that state of mind which is not caught in this tidal movement? Considering what the world is becoming – utterly immoral, corrupt, without any sense of integrity, what is our responsibility as scientists, as philosophers, or as ordinary human beings like us? What is our responsibility? And if we do undertake certain responsibility, will it ever change this enormous disintegration? I’ve opened that for us to discuss. As educated human beings – so-called educated – do we ever consider other people at all, or are we only concerned with ourselves, with our becoming, with our achievements, neglecting our relationship with each other, and with the world? I’d like to discuss these points. Doesn’t somebody want to come and sit here? It’s nice and comfortable. Won’t you come? There’s plenty of room, sir. Don’t be nervous, sir, please, I won’t bite. What have the scientists achieved? They have certainly given us extraordinary technological progress, and also, they are responsible for the instruments of war, for the instruments of destruction of other human beings by the million, or by the thousand. They have invented the atom bomb, the computer, the robot and all the technological necessities of life, which are essential. But also, they have invented biological warfare, the destruction of human beings by the untold number, which has been going on for the last 5,000 years – an historical process, that is, war every year. And those who are responsible for this are the so-called educated people. Professors and their students, the learned, the men in power have not been able to solve any of these problems, that is, human problems, human misery, the terrible agony that human beings go through. So, what do we do? What’s your responsibility? Do we verbally enjoy exchange of words, exchange of theories, or is it possible for human beings like us to transform or empty our consciousness of all the travail, the conflicts, the miseries?
7:39 Rupert Sheldrake: It seems to me that the crucial question is this fundamental question of whether changes in people we normally think of as individuals affect everybody else, affect the whole world. The difficulty of the question seems to be that if such a change had already happened at any time in human history and had transformed humanity, we wouldn’t be in this position, if there had already been this total transformation. So, the fact this transformation has not occurred, which is the reason for the present state of the world, means that we are talking about something which has no precedent, which has never occurred. Therefore, it’s extremely difficult to know whether such a thing is possible.
8:29 K: I understand. R

S: Is it wishful thinking that if some change occurs in us or in anyone else, that humanity would be transformed? We have no historical evidence for this being possible.
8:42 K: I don’t think humanity, as a whole, can be transformed. Is my consciousness, and yours and hers, so very different from the consciousness of the rest of mankind? The rest of mankind, whether they live in America or Russia, they are as my consciousness – miserable, unhappy, incredibly insecure, they believe in some outside agency, as God and so on. If I’m like that, my consciousness is similar to the rest of man. So, I’m questioning whether we are individuals at all, not in the totalitarian sense... I won’t go into the Marxist theories. I’m questioning whether there is individuality at all and if one human being transforms radically, fundamentally, the content of his consciousness, won’t it affect the rest of the consciousness of man?
10:17 RS: Yes. But is the present consciousness of man, since there have been people in the past who’ve undergone unusual transformations – Buddha and so on – can we say the present state of mankind is already a result of these kind of positive transformations and also the rather negative, destructive tendencies? And if there are further transformations, will it merely change the balance a little, or is it possible for the whole of mankind to be radically transformed, permanently?
11:00 K: But can I, as an ordinary human being, can we not radically change? I am not talking of general humanity. I’m talking about your consciousness, my consciousness, hers, is similar, so, if I can change, empty my consciousness of all the travail and the misery of existence, perhaps, I will affect the whole content of human consciousness. That’s all I’m saying. Is it possible for me as a human being, to totally empty my consciousness of all the contradictions, lack of integrity, absurd beliefs or sane beliefs, all that, throw it over, and be totally free as a human being? If I can bring that about, I may affect the whole of consciousness of man. Like Hitler has affected the consciousness of man, like the Buddha, or anybody, they’ve affected the consciousness of man.
12:41 Ramachandra Gandhi: Is it merely an empirical matter? Had these enlightened beings not attained enlightenment, things would have been incalculably worse than they are. I think Krishnaji’s earlier reference to the possibility of contagion, but it’s more alchemical, mysterious than this, even, the way in which the enlightened consciousness touches everything else. I don’t think we are meant to know in advance, this might itself be a disincentive and a pollutant. This can easily become a ground for escape, but it doesn’t have to. There is a kind of greed in wanting to know precisely how all manner of worthwhile results are going to be attained. If I may draw upon the purely moral notion of a categorical imperative, something which simply has got to be done. Apart from things like helping your neighbour in distress, which simply has got to be done, there is also a call of consciousness. I think if it were really a categorical imperative, then not to do that would be to add to the existing wrongdoing. I’m impressed by Krishnaji’s suggestion that, in a radical way, there are no others, and in so far as one man or woman radically alters, all are, too, in some invisible way. A sufficiently insightful history would be able to demonstrate this in the case of the Buddha and Jesus, and Sri Krishna and others. But even if this were not possible, if this is a categorical imperative, we are beings that must seek our own absolute centre, then we simply must get on with it.
15:02 RS: The question wasn’t either what will exact change be like, and can we predict exact details, nor was it whether we should do it, but whether or not this transformation is possible. The difficulty of this question is, I know it hasn’t happened to me. It may have indirectly, through others, in a subtle way, but for something that we haven’t actually directly experienced, or known or recognised ourselves. We may see the possibility of it in others or we may wish it were. I really want these things to be possible.
15:44 K: Shouldn’t we investigate whether it is possible or not?
15:50 RS: That’s what I’m saying. This is a fundamental question.
15:53 K: That’s a fundamental question. That’s what you are saying. Is it possible actually? R

S: Yes.
15:59 K: Not theoretically. Let’s talk it over.
16:05 Pupul Jayakar: But what are we doing? Are we talking about the possibility of changing man’s consciousness or are we talking about the possibility of totally emptying the content of consciousness as is today? Krishnaji, one thing you have to understand. You might say we are the consciousness of mankind, but we are islands. The mainland may be also earth, we are also earth, but we are islands, therefore, we can’t think of it as a consciousness of mankind.
16:54 K: All right, let’s forget the whole, and the rest of mankind. I am the mankind. I am mankind, the result of mankind, all their misery, I’m all that. My consciousness is in a state of utter confusion, conflict, anxiety, loneliness, despair, depression, immense sorrow – it’s all there. Now I’m asking, is it possible to totally be free of all that? Otherwise, life has no meaning. I am born and die, if I believe in reincarnation, it’s just another flippant theory, but actually, I have only this life. If I live that way, I don’t see the point of living that way. There is no meaning in it. I may be rich, I may be poor, I may be very scholarly, very clever, but what, at the end of it all? I may build temples and all that nonsense, at the end of it, I am left where I began. So, I say to myself, is it possible radically, to empty this stupid existence, not commit suicide – empty it. That’s what I would like to discuss.
18:45 K.K. Singh: The birth of this tragedy and this total chaos, I think, is due to oblivion of human existence. Man’s inner existence has been completely forgotten. Man’s fear, anxiety, loneliness, he has been alienated from all sort of things, from his own family, from nature, from institutions.
19:15 K: Are you saying this has been eliminated?
19:19 KKS: I mean the human existence, human as such, man as such, who has got fear, loneliness, isolation and all these things, with all this embodiment, he has been forgotten totally, and we are perceiving nothing but mathematics and physics. All this is nothing but the impact of that mathematics and physics, and we have lost totally the human existence, meaning of living.
19:53 PJ: That would presume that there was a time when there was no fear, no greed, but human existence, from the beginning has shown all these. We are no different basically to what our forefathers were. We are the product of all that. There’s basically no difference.
20:15 KKS: I agree, but previously there was not the total chaos and degree of insecurity that we feel today.
20:25 PJ: But today was in the seed of that complacency which we may have had 50 or 100 years ago.
20:34 K: Are you saying there is partial chaos?
20:38 PJ: He says the degree of chaos has been very greatly increased because of the increase in technology, science...
20:48 K: Whatever the reason, I am there. I may invent ten thousand reasons, but the fact is I’m living in this chaos.
21:00 Radha Burnier: I think much of the difficulty is that most of the time one is not aware that one is living in this chaos, except at a very superficial level, and occasionally. Otherwise, one is lost in a stream of unawareness. It’s only on an occasion like this that one becomes a little aware that there is chaos.
21:31 K: If I may insist or pursue, you’re not answering my question. I’m the ordinary man caught in this wheel. What am I to do, or not do?
21:55 RG: The answer surely must be an emphatic, ‘Yes’ to the question whether this total transformation is possible.
22:03 K: I say, for myself, it is possible. I don’t want you to accept it or deny it. But I say it is possible. Then, where are you?
22:18 RG: Even this initial first step needs to be taken more comprehensively more carefully and more many-sidedly than it has been taken so far. But may I respond to a point that has arisen in the statements just made by Pupulji and others? We might commit the fallacy of comparison of terrible mess. But, just as the felicity of enlightenment is qualitatively different from any other kind of felicity, so the badness is bad enough. Comparisons aren’t really called for. It is pretty bad, and it must always have been like that, but I accept the remark made that it’s a question of awareness, but of a radical kind of awareness of the misery of this, not just of a comparative kind. It really is rock bottom, and it couldn’t be worse than this.
23:21 RB: An awareness which is real awareness, not some kind of a theoretical awareness.
23:28 RG: Of a completely unself-deceiving kind. That must surely be another of the first steps.
23:36 KKS: Do you mean only if we are intensely aware of the chaos and meaninglessness, there is any possibility of our transformation?
23:52 RG: If awareness can survive its object – total meaninglessness – that is ground for hope. If awareness doesn’t cancel itself, when it has as its object this completely despairing thing, that is itself the ground for hope. One is not meant to dance and sing about it straightaway, but the fact that it has been possible for human beings to take a completely unself-deceiving look and still survive that moment of recognition, is ground for hope, and splendid news. May I suggest an analogy? Supposing somebody says there are ad hoc cures for cancer, but suppose it’s announced that we’ve understood the cause of cancer. This itself begins to work in its own silent way. There might be short-term palliatives, of one kind or another, and they may not work. But supposing somebody in some corner of the world, in a completely believable, scientifically established way announces the cure of cancer and an understanding of the process, I think that is, in itself, a pure first step. I may be wrong, but I just share this with you, a lot of very hasty announcements of new plans for the world suffer from a lack of conviction at the heart because there’s no real understanding of the causality of misery, whereas, if in our understanding of radically transformed human beings in the past and present, we can boldly, without hesitation, make such an announcement to ourselves first, and to others...
25:55 K: May I interrupt?

RG: Please do.
25:59 K: I come to you, professors, scientists, learned people, I come to you with my misery, my loneliness, all the rest of it. What do you do with me? Give me words? She tells me to be aware, and you tell me something else. I want water. You give me words. What am I to do, or not do? What way am I to change? What makes me change? Sorrow? I’ve had a lot of sorrow, a lot of problems, knocks on the head, I haven’t changed. I’ve read all the sacred books and all the rest of it, – if I have read, I hope I have not – and at the end of it all I’m just left where I am, after a million years, where we started, fear, anxiety, and all the rest of it. I come to you and say, ‘Please, sirs, you’re all so learned, please, help me. Don’t give me theories, don’t say you should be aware, how much awareness. All those are meaningless to me. What am I to do?’.
27:42 RG: Such a persistent an inquirer, in this make-believe situation, would himself bring hope to those whom he asks this question.
27:52 K: You give me hope?
27:54 RG: No, if the inquirer is as persistent as yourself in this imagined context, the persons he would ask, would themselves be transformed a bit.
28:05 K: Help me to investigate. I will investigate, but I can’t go much further. Help me, sir, don’t...! Give me water!
28:16 RG: I think it would be presumptuous to offer something which is not water but to welcome you in the community of inquirers and say let us inquire.
28:26 K: Let’s enquire, all right, let’s inquire. Let’s inquire. Where do I start?
28:36 RG: Where do we start?
28:38 K: All right, I’m the ordinary man. Where do I start? With myself, if you say, ‘Start with yourself’. How am I to look at myself? What’s the mirror in which I can see all my reactions, the thoughts, all the misery – you follow? – in which I can see, actually, not theoretically, actually, brutally see what I am? Where? There is no mirror like that.
29:20 RG: A loved one is a mirror.
29:22 K: Aha, you see, you have gone off already – ‘loved’. I don’t know what you are talking about – ‘loved one’. I think I love my wife, but...
29:35 RG: Do you not see in her comparable misery?
29:38 K: Don’t tell me that. My wife is a bore and I’m a bore to her, so what? We are accustomed to each other, we’ve irritated each other, bullied each other, possessed each other, sexually and every other way. At the end of ten years... God! So, where do I look?
30:07 RG: I think the miserable children will be the mirror.
30:17 K: I wish I hadn’t brought them into the world because the world is pretty miserable. I’m crying over it, and you’re giving me a handkerchief to wipe my tears. I don’t want your handkerchiefs.
30:41 PJ: Why do you need a mirror?

K: Where do I look, I said. Where do I look, so as to be very clear that I don’t deceive myself?
30:52 PJ: You look at the ground from which this springs.
30:55 K: Yes, where is the ground?

PJ: My mind.
31:00 K: Tell me, show me, what my mind is. It’s so perverted, so distorted, so degenerate. Your education has done all this to me.
31:15 PJ: Still, I can look at the perversion, distortion. Why are you saying that it is not possible?
31:21 K: I don’t say it’s not possible. My mind, my brain, functions in a very small, narrow groove.
31:32 PJ: So, I will see the narrow groove.
31:38 K: Do I see it, or is it an idea that my mind is in a narrow groove?
31:45 PJ: You said, ‘In what mirror will I look?’.
31:50 K: I can only look very clearly in my relationship to another. That is the mirror.
31:57 PJ: Sir, this is something which I... When you say ‘relationship with another’, even that act sprouts from the ground of the mind. Even that which accompanies my relationship to another, the sprouting of that is in the ground of my mind.
32:25 K: Yes. Proceed.
32:27 PJ: When you say I see myself in the mirror of relationship, it is really seeing the ground from which the sprouting has been. Whether narrow or wide, it is still the ground.
32:42 K: Proceed, help me a little bit more.
32:49 PJ: So, what is the difficulty in perceiving that ground? Is it possible, and with what instruments will I perceive that ground and the sprouting from that ground? With what shall I face it?
33:10 K: The only instrument I have is this terrible thought.
33:22 PJ: Thought is that which sprouts.

K: I have only that thought. The only instrument I have with which to look is thought. Let me finish, please. I have cultivated thought for million years, and that’s the only instrument I have, and with that instrument you are telling me to look. Before I look, you say, ‘Look at the ground from which thought has arisen’. Is that it?

PJ: No, sir. Thought first makes that inquiry. Thought says it can look at the ground, but it also has other instruments. Don’t limit it to thought.
34:12 K: The other instruments are seeing, tasting, smelling, the senses.
34:17 PJ: They are instruments.

K: The senses are my misery.
34:21 PJ: They are also my instruments.
34:25 K: I’m only partially aware of or use one or two senses. I never use the fullness of my senses.
34:39 PJ: Yes, but before I can even get to the fullness of my senses, the starting point of inquiry – may be partial, starting point of the inquiry will be thought and the instruments which I have, which are my senses, to perceive the ground.
34:59 K: The instrument I have is thought and desire.
35:03 PJ: Also, I have the instrument to see, to listen, to feel.
35:07 K: Which is translated into desire.
35:12 PJ: Why do you say that?
35:16 K: I see a beautiful house, I want it. I see a beautiful woman, I want her. I see a lovely car, I want it. The seeing is translated into the desire of having.
35:29 PJ: But there is a seed of this desire for the car sprouting in the mind.
35:36 K: Yes, of course, it’s sprouting in the mind.
35:38 PJ: That is the first movement.
35:42 K: All right. Then what is my mind? What is the quality of my mind? Are we separating the mind from the brain? Are we separating the brain from the mind? Then what is the mind which is so very different from the brain?
36:07 PJ: Is the mind different from the brain?
36:10 K: That’s what I’m questioning. I’d like to go into this.
36:16 PJ: You perceive the sprouting, you neither perceive the mind nor the brain.
36:23 K: Quite right. So, what?
36:26 PJ: The words ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ in terms of the mirror, have no meaning.
36:34 K: Where am I left at the end of this exchange of words?
36:38 PJ: You said where will I perceive, where will I come in contact, and I’m trying to see whether we can proceed into this question.
36:51 RG: You used ‘contradiction’ in one of your recent lectures. Such a man as you pretend to be in this conversation, must be embarrassed by the contradiction... If the ‘I’ is so troublesome, and indeed so pervasive, why does he limit it to just this one finite being? This is a first class contradiction to confront the miserable man with. On the one hand, you have made a cosmos of this ‘I’, complaining about misery, then you have restricted this ‘I’ to one tiny place in the universe. Either you should consistently deny any substantialities of this ‘I’, or you should universalise it, and not regard your ‘I’ as other. This contradiction, perhaps, in our own our logic-ridden times, there might be some irony in this even, to confront individuals with this straight contradiction and not with any moralisms, merely. I have risked a straight answer to your question, sir.
38:10 George Sudarshan: I was reminded of a metaphorical story from our traditional knowledge. When you talk about the misery, how overpowering the misery is, and when I hear Mr Gandhi talk about the cosmic, troublesome ‘I’. Arjuna went to do tapas to be able to get Shiva to come and greet him, embrace him and give him some additional powers. Naturally, he went into a forest to get rid of the normal disturbances. While he was doing it, at the time Shiva was to appear, instead a hunter appeared, chasing an animal. Arjuna said, ‘Don’t disturb me, don’t you see I’m meditating’. He said, ‘I don’t know who you are, you do your thing, I’ll do mine’. They fought. Arjuna used all his powers and was completely overpowered. He was so exhausted that he could not even close his eyes when he was put back on his back. In the utter shame of not being able to close his eyes, he looks and sees on the top of the hunter’s head the crescent moon. At this point he realises that having exhausted all devices at his disposal, that what he had already been wanting at the back of his mind, to remove the disturbances, has appeared. The onset of misery, which you so poignantly and so eloquently portray, is not necessarily a bad thing, because a little misery is much worse than a lot of misery, because if the misery can completely overtake you, transform your world, then you see that minor palliatives are simply no good. If I owe somebody 100 rupees and don’t have the money, I would be concerned. If I owe somebody one crore of rupees there is no way I could pay it back, then I would have to devise some totally new strategies. So, the misery that surrounds us, I don’t agree with the statement that the scientists are responsible for the misery, or that the misery is so overpowering. The same technology has produced these television things so that your words could be carried to more people. But assuming for the time being that we go along with the fantasy and metaphor of absolute misery, absolute misery is a very good thing because if it’s so absolute, you will have to do something about it. If I had a friend who said to me, ‘My misery is so overpowering, nobody ever had this kind of misery’, I would try to first illustrate that it’s not so great, other people also have miseries. Secondly, eliminate all intermediate strategies used to hold it back for just a time, to make things totally hopeless, by saying that this method does not lead to anything at all. So part of the love that Ramachandra talked about, is also saying, ‘Look, these things don’t work. You are not as miserable as you could be, if only you realised that these are temporary things, you could be more miserable, and make a total transformation’. The transformations don’t come because your misery is removed. Sometimes great misery could be the threshold for a total transcendence.
41:51 K: All right. I am that misery. I’m at the threshold. What, who will push me over the threshold?
42:05 AP: Sir, I take issue with Dr Sudarshan on two points. One is that I don’t think, as a scientist, he can disown the curse that his tribe has held over humanity during our lifetime. When I was a young man, it did not exist. It exists today – man’s capacity to wipe out life on this planet. This is certainly something which did not exist before. The second thing that you said is also quite open to question. Both the things that you have said are slightly rhetorical, because you must admit that we are facing a totally new crisis, with a new intensity. Man has never been faced with the crisis of his survival, as today, and that he is responsible for it. That is, the responsibility of man has never been so total as it is in 1982.
43:30 PJ: But may I ask what relationship this has...
43:35 AP: With what Krishnaji is saying?

PJ:...with this..? First of all...
43:44 K: Sudarshan is talking with his tongue in his cheek.
43:48 GS: No, sir, I am very serious.

PJ: If I can ask, do we really want to empty the content of our consciousness? Do we really want to empty it? Do I want to empty the content of my consciousness? I think that is the fundamental question. It is no use your saying, ‘Give me water’. Unless I say, ‘I’m prepared to face it and face the consequences and, in the real tantric sense, put my neck under that sword and press the stirrups with my own feet to cut off my head’.
44:36 RG: There’s an irrationality of not emptying the pot overflowing with misery. Because modern man’s self-image is of a rational being. It may not be the only style of this spiritual therapy but it may be one way of embarrassing deeply.
44:56 PJ: If one says one wants to be empty, then one can possibly open the door, or even move towards the threshold.
45:08 RG: No, but an overflowing pot of misery not being emptied is about the most splendid piece of irrationality that I can think of. For the man who is still vain, often the way is to make holes in the pot. This marvellous Socratic-Zen conversation Krishnaji has initiated is one way of drilling holes in that pot because we are too vain to empty it. But we must shoot straight into that pot by argument and by example and so on. Otherwise, he will never own your question, ‘Do you want to?’ He will say, ‘Of course I do’.
45:50 PJ: He might say differently. He may have emptied the pot, but I was going to ask him when he said, ‘Give me water’, it’s really your having to give the water.
46:04 RG: To keep the drains functioning within oneself is one way.
46:11 GS: I stand accused by two of the most excellent people here, and I must at least put up my own defence.
46:20 K: With your tongue in your cheek, still.
46:27 GS: There is a great deal of notion that modern man is rational, scientific, objective, that science is objective, we are dominated by science, we are dominated by technology. All these are statements which one has heard and not really produced. Ultimately, the decision of how much objective truth is to be accepted is a subjective judgment, and the question of whether the whole world began in a big bang or whether we originated in a cosmic soup, is really something which ultimately we have to decide, whether the argumentation, judgments and premises are right. Eventually, if you feel that things are not really acceptable to us, we will say, I disregard this whole line of argumentation. I don’t know any of those things, nor do these people, they were not there, and I shall now attempt a totally new construction. Similarly, with regard to the question of relating to the world, what are the rational and practicable methods, is again based on a certain set of subjective value judgments. At a certain point, whether by ultimate misery, or at the end of a long dialogue, in which you are painted into a corner, or by a flash of insight, or by no reason whatever, if you are convinced that this world-view is not satisfactory, one will change it, not necessarily for something better. One does not change the world-view because one is not convinced that the statements about misery are true. I would like to challenge Achyutji, but it would be a very unequal combat because he will defeat me if I were to do it in public. But all of us who are here are reasonably comfortable in the world. I have not seen one person who is really miserable in here. Nobody is thirsty here, nobody has gone hungry, everybody has enough to wear, and knows there is food for tomorrow. There is a great deal of law and order despite all the lawlessness and corruption. Modern life is stressful but not necessarily as insecure as one tries to make it out. Even if I didn’t do a jot of work, I have the conviction that I will not starve for the rest of my life. One could be mistaken about it. I have lived through the Cuban missile crisis, I saw President Kennedy address the nation on the television and said, ‘Maybe this the big thing, and we will not be around’. You will certainly feel different. I’ve also undergone surgery. The doctor said, ‘Maybe not much will happen to you, but set your affairs in order, write letters and whatever. You feel differently afterwards, you’re a little surprised to be back in the same old world. So, while the idea about the nuclear destruction of the world or large-scale warfare are there, life goes on much more. In fact, small wars or disturbances create more problems. So, the misery of the world is exaggerated for most of us and probably for the majority of people who are seeking. I used to think that the old days were much better days. It seems that the possibility of encountering oneself is very much greater at the present time than at any time in history. Maybe there was a time millions of years ago when people were much freer, but today there are many more opportunities for reminding ourselves that transformation begins with oneself rather than the outside world. I’m always accused of being clever, sophisticated and tricky but this comes from my heart. At the present time, there is more opportunity for a person to be a mumukshu, than at any time in the past. The other thing is, I have been a teacher for many decades now, and the art of teaching is being able to be one with the student. A good teacher is not necessarily one who is very clever or learned, but who can both be at his level as well as the student’s level, so that you are communicating more to the student in you than the student outside. Transformation is also the same when somebody comes to you in misery, how do you communicate? If you can internalise that person’s problem, enlarge your awareness to absorb both that person’s position and your own. If you simply become one with him and agree that the world is very miserable, you’re not doing him any favours. You’re just making yourself miserable. You may feel less guilty, but you’re not doing any good. Communication or love at this particular level, involves the art of teaching, the art of being able to comprehend, maintain two different levels of awareness at the same time, then you can bring the two together because they are both parts of yourself.
52:18 RG: George, would you not say that if there are many opportunities today to seek freedom, there are also many opportunities for forgetting? The two tend to sometimes cancel each other out. The forgetfulness of our times is really also as tragic as the other is welcome. I think this does alter the diagnosis a bit. But even if nobody here is miserable, if you attribute to us enough empathy – not for our tiny selves – but given that empathy, I bet many of us are very miserable. Of course, they are not going to frown all the time, but deep down, they feel terrible. I don’t want to speak in the first person but I feel terrible and I’m sure so many do because of the hunger of others. I wish that we would also identify so completely, and like Ramakrishna Paramahansa suffer pangs, but not all of us are gifted in that way. But empathy doesn’t go far enough because it is founded on the view that the other is other than me. Until we achieve that perfect identity there are only these two stark choices. This is in response to your reprimand. I accept it like your first diagnosis, but there is the other side.
54:09 PJ: May I ask one question? There’s one factor present in the human mind and human consciousness and that is the factor of curiosity. Probably a lot of scientific investigation in various other areas has been man’s desire to find out, to know, to inquire. Why is it that when it comes to this curiosity being used to discover the spaces, the distances, the whole structure of the human mind and consciousness and depths which lie beyond, why do we get bogged, why do we put up obstacles ourselves to this curiosity penetrating? Because, probably, it’s as great an unmapped surface remaining to be investigated as any other sphere. Why is it that man’s inquiry never pushes...?
55:19 AP: I will supplement what you say by directly challenging George. Never has man perversely striven for degeneration, misusing all his capacities, primarily by the misuse of his brain, to the point of bringing an entire culture to its demise. I say the problem of regeneration has achieved a great urgency today because man seems hell-bent on destroying such culture as he has. I’m breaking an important rule of this assembly by bringing in the factor of time, because when I say ‘urgency’, that means I am in time. I am aware of this contradiction, but I feel that this urgency cannot be wiped out. The fact that you refuse to take note of it, the urgency does not become less, because you see that man himself is striving his utmost to destroy, that is the atom is destroying the physical world, but there is such a thing as the mind destroying its own heritage of all human culture, like the end of an epoch. There is today in the West and something in India, I suppose it must be everywhere, an appalling degeneration. This degeneration exists side by side with some of the best minds. Therefore, I feel that this problem of regeneration has attained an urgency in time which cannot be just brushed aside.
57:33 PJ: If that urgency is so monumental, then it would have found expression. The fact is, we sit around.
57:41 AP: No, permit me, when we sit with Krishnaji, we sit here because I heard him say this 50 years ago, and it rang no bell. When he talked of freedom, I told him the British were far more important. When he was talking of anything, I’d say something else is more important. Today, I have come to find that all my defences have collapsed, and I have to give priority to the problem of regeneration which we can only ignore if we are blind as bats. And our top scientists, top philosophers are blind as bats because they are trying their best to ignore it.
58:40 PJ: But he said there has never been a more propitious time...
58:48 AP: But he said something else, also.
58:52 GS: I have a feeling we are digressing, but since it’s a direct question, I must answer it. I believe the greatest danger to the world is from the confusion in the minds of people, not nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are not under the command of the scientists. Weapon-making is not a scientific tradition, but a technology tradition, it is an engineering feat and not a scientific feat. But we have a department of science and technology. In any country, weapons are not under control of scientists, they are under the control of the administrators, the leaders of the country who are ordinary citizens, who often refuse to understand the science of the situation. If there is a responsibility of potential destruction, or a threat, it is carried out by the country’s leaders, elected by ordinary people, and not by the scientists. I’m much more concerned with something else for which the scientists are responsible, and that is the tacit acceptance of a negative philosophy of darkness, of basically saying that the whole world is purposeless, that in fact the atoms and molecules, or genes and chromosomes, or fields and their interactions, are the only things in the world. There are no value judgments, no purposes, no such thing as enlightenment. There is almost a prohibition, I don’t think it is written down, for anybody who is interested in consciousness or enlightenment, from holding high office in the scientific and university traditions in this country, at the present time. A very eminent scientist, in charge of advising the national defence, was basically eased out, simply because he felt that the spiritual search was legitimate, and asserted that in print. The reason that is possible, is not only because of the scientists, but because other intellectuals and other citizens of the country are unwilling to take exception to this statement. There was a big science Congress in Mysore. You look at the totally political science congress. Major policy statements were made by the leaders of the country. But there is no statement about consciousness, awareness, investigation into the nature of perception being the last frontier. All the statements are about technology, about science, about weaponry, increasing production, export earnings and so on. So, the danger threatening our country, as well as the world, is coming in from the ascendancy of the philosophy of darkness, which is hostile and inimical to enlightenment, not from scientists. It’s true that if it were not for the scientists, many of these things would not have happened. But equally, we would not have produced the same amount of food, we wouldn’t all be here – I’ve travelled 10,000 miles. It wouldn’t have been possible. So science and technology is not the thing which determines it, it’s the people. People press the button. People make the decisions with regard to it. But to come back to the question of intellectuals not being aware, if intellectuals do it, it is only because the nation supports it. Who challenges the intellectuals’ right to say what is the nature of reality? Practically, people do not enter into a direct confrontation, but there has been no time in which adventures in consciousness has been more widely pursued in this country and the world than at the present time, maybe in medieval times. But, at that time, the people who pursued the thing were a very limited number of people in monasteries and cathedrals. Now it’s people all over the place. Even this atrocious music in the morning, in which everybody competes with everything else, it seems to be partly about making people aware early, as they wake up, about things which they are likely to forget. I feel that this is the time when there is greater awareness of the need for doing something radical. There is a greater urgency now that the pace of life has quickened, everybody is busy, everything is happening a little too fast. If you don’t do something about it, your wealth will be wiped out, your position is eroded, your house is occupied, and your yard is overgrown. Everything happens faster, but good things along with the bad things. I somehow seem to be speaking for an elitist, complacent position. I’m not doing that. I’m saying that this is the time when there is greater awareness of the genuine nature of our misery but, somehow, it does not find a unified expression in the country. There are a few isolated people who talk about it, but the standard position is that science is for saving humanity or for defending the country, rather than science enabling you to see. It is like spectacles. It enhances your view of the world, and having seen that, you should be better able to understand the nature of causation. Physics should be made compulsory somewhere during adult education to show the nature of causation, which is what we’re talking about. That once you see the chain of causation, then like the Buddha, perhaps one would be able to see what is the origin of misery.
1:05:05 RG: George, you give with one hand and take away with another. If there is greater awareness today, there is also great scepticism about any possibility of a way out in theoretical, intellectual, professional circles. You responded splendidly to the moral indictment of scientists, but you yourself indicted them even more thoroughly when you said that their theoretical world-view is all wrong. You can’t escape that responsibility. If the theoretical world you inspired by ongoing science is so dismal, that’s a far greater responsibility than any particular collaboration between scientists and politicians. Also, I do feel that we must not base any right effort on fear alone. I remember a very clever phrase, ‘Man does not live by dread alone’. Because whether or not the world is in danger, worldliness seems to feel no danger at all today. That’s a terrible thing. If we think the world is in danger but we keep worldliness intact, I don’t think we’ll make it. We may survive a war for the next 50 years, but I think it will be there in the next 100 years. The very idea of worldliness, I don’t mean in a renunciate sense, but that this is all there is. The pratyaksh apraman is all that there is, not even in the profound sense of awareness but in the gross, ‘sthoola’ sense. If the theoretical scientists and indeed theoretical workers do not question the very fundamentals of modern thought, very boldly, I see no hope. Politicians may possess this survival instinct more than scientists and they may just save the world. Scientists, like other intellectual workers today, tend to suffer from a despairing nihilism and may push the button. It’s very strange that the very politicians whom one hates may, because they want to win the next election, want the world to survive until that time.
1:07:19 RB: Are we digressing in discussing the responsibility of scientists?
1:07:25 RG: But we were invited to do that, as scientists, as philosophers.
1:07:31 P.K. Sundaram: Sir, may I have a word? We have two senses in which the word ‘misery’ can be used. Dr Sudarshan was very illuminating when he talked about misery, namely, that misery can be put out, eradicated, a regeneration of man, transformation of the world could take place. Perhaps we are not miserable at all, and science could do a lot. There’s no doubt about it. I think we can grant that. But the second sense which appears to be more important, more fundamental, is that the very finitude of man itself is a problem. The finitude of man can never be eradicated by sheer physical science and its methods. There must be some other method whereby we transcend this finitude, this self-alienation, man standing aloof from himself. This is the bread, this is the dread, and this dread of nothingness into which we pass inevitably, no science can put it off, no science can prevent it. Man faces nothing as the abyss of the dread of death, the emptiness, the nothingness. How are we going to get out of it? Misery in that fundamental sense must have to be tackled. It cannot be tackled by science.
1:09:04 RS: It is traditionally tackled by religion. To go back to this case of the man who’s so miserable and says, ‘What can I do? Give me water’. The traditional answer of most world religions is to give people water, and to say liberation is possible or salvation is possible, and that these are the ways to do it. It may or may not happen in this life, it may happen in a future life, or it may happen after death in another kind of existence. This is the traditional sphere in which religion offers an answer. This seems to me a huge question as to whether or not the religious answers are valid. One can’t dismiss the whole lot, with a vague dismissal of the historical thoughts of world religions. The question leads us to this area, because the man who says, ‘What can I do, I’m miserable, give me water’, if he goes to a Christian Evangelical, he’ll rapidly respond to that appeal. He’ll say, ‘Here is the answer’. And if he goes to any other proselytiser, for any other religion, he will say, ‘Here is the answer’. What’s wrong with their answers? I can’t see that we can dismiss them.
1:10:35 PKS: We’re not so much concerned with the validity of the answers. That there are answers, is enough.
1:10:41 RS: The question we started with is whether there are answers. Is there any way out of this state? Is transformation possible? There are many people who say that it is. They say follow this method and you’ll undergo transformation. The question is, then, whether we believe them. Many people tell us that it’s possible to undergo transformation, and the authority must be based on those claiming to have undergone it. The question is whether we believe them or not, if we are trying to answer the question, ‘Is it possible?’.
1:11:30 K: Where have you left me?

AP: Where we started.
1:11:35 GS: I have left you at the point at which you accused me of being clever. So I said, no, not only am I not clever, but the entire profession of scientists is not very clever.
1:11:47 K: I’m not talking about scientists.
1:11:49 GS: But coming back to the thing, it seems that the purpose of any organised body of knowledge is to be able to connect together all the things which are known as one piece, so that you see what is not understood. And it is also known that, for example in physical sciences, anything that happens cannot be supernatural.
1:12:16 K: Agreed.

GS: Therefore, ultimate emphasis or test, is in terms of actual things, not elegant theories, which is sad for a theoretical physicist because many things we make are so nice, but then an experiment comes along and says, ‘Too bad, that’s not right’. Therefore, all intellectual pursuits are simply short-hand understanding of one’s whole body of experience, and all experience together is not in terms of knowledge, it’s simply a premise for perceiving things at a particular time. And direct perception, direct experimentation is the only one, therefore, the prediction of what would happen by following a path is always a tentative one. No one can tell you what would happen. One can tell you what is likely, probable, or expected, but ultimately, what happens is what happens. The purpose of science or any organised knowledge is therefore not to connect the things together but to find out what things are not yet together. The transition from a state of awareness of misery or fragmentation, of causal chain in which your sequence of events have to take place, from which you cannot get out, from that state of awareness to one in which there is freedom. Freedom subject to all the constraints that are there. Pigs and men don’t fly, so if you want to fly, you make another condition and get inside an aeroplane. You come to a situation in which the things constrained by law you don’t even want to change. Then you find out where freedom is, where is the chink in the chain to slide through and get out. But any statement by anybody, including oneself, saying, ‘It is possible to get out of this misery’, is tentative until you actually get out.

K: Of course.
1:14:24 RG: It is trust about those who have in the past got out. This connects with our friend’s question. It really is an age of scepticism, not merely about the world but the past and present, too. Why this inability to say, ‘Yes, it is absolutely scientific’? It doesn’t have to happen for the first time, – I’m not an idolater of the past but let me state the argument – if we can be sceptical about the whole body of the past in respect of this, I don’t see how we will accept the results of any successful experiment even if those results were to stare us in the face. We would find a way of doubting them. I worry, George, about the experimental model which you propose.
1:15:07 GS: But at the present time, the problem is not so much that one is sceptical whether it will come through or not. But most people are saying, ‘Don’t confuse me with facts and processes, I already have a theory saying that it cannot happen.
1:15:22 RG: The thing is to fault that theory. The theoretical hard work here is simply not being done. We were invited to state as scientists and philosophers. As a professional philosopher, if I may say, the theoretical work is simply not fundamental. It’s very pernickety, very clever, very good, I’ve done it myself. But it’s not nearly as fundamental as is required. There’s a gulf between philosophy and science, science and experiment between everything and daily living. The whole thing reeks of contradiction and the modern age isn’t embarrassed. If it were not so hilarious, it would be tragic, really.
1:16:07 K: Sir, I’d like to ask, if I may, I’m agonised by fear, really agonised, not verbally but deeply I feel it’s a terrible state to be in fear. You tell me, ‘It’s partly good to be in fear’, another tells me, ‘You can get out’. But the fact remains that it is a tremendous agony to be in fear. Help me to get out of it. Don’t say, ‘You can help yourself’, all that, help me to be free of this burden. That’s all I am asking. I’m not asking about war, scientists, politics, all that. This is my problem. I come to you, as a man who has travelled, is a scientist, all the rest of it. I say, ‘Please, help me’. You say a little fear is good, it’s good to have a little cancer, it’s good to be this and that. But I say, ‘Please, those are not my questions’. It is a tremendous feeling of incredible fear that I have. And all that you have told me doesn’t affect me. I want to be free of it, it’s a burning demand. It is not just a pleasant thing to bear. I ask you to help me. If you say, ‘I can’t help you, Old Boy’, I understand that very well. But I come to you because you’re all very... ‘Help me’. You haven’t helped me. So, I say to myself, what’s the point of all this? I go to her, and she says, ‘Do this and do that’, I might, but at the end of it I know jolly well that I’m not going to be free of it. So, what am I to do? There is death, birth. I can go into it all as much as you like, but the fact at the end of all this discussion, literature, science, is this deep-rooted fear in me. I’m talking of an ordinary human being, not too bright, or highly educated, fairly intelligent, like me, I say, ‘Please, help me to be free of it’. That’s all I’m asking, I have no other question. Because if I am free of it, then my life is like that tree.
1:19:39 GS: Not many come to me with fear, I could talk about a different area.
1:19:45 K: Don’t move away. I have come to you with fear.
1:19:52 GS: I have never encountered this situation...
1:19:54 K: You are encountering it now.
1:19:57 GS: But you’re joking.
1:19:58 RG: I think this is a poignant and very fundamental question. It’s an ironical way of getting us to admit that we don’t have answers I think we are deceiving ourselves. This is a human situation. Somebody comes to me, I may be a professor of X or Y, I have to admit that I don’t have that answer, and that is shocking. If that absolutely real, poignant inquiry, anybody, an ordinary man, according to Krishnaji...
1:20:33 K: Sir, Dr Sudarshan said, ‘Don’t joke with me’. He knows me and I have no fear, about death, about living...
1:20:42 RG: But your wonderful empathy is credible, Krishnaji. Your acting the part of the miserable man is very real.
1:20:54 K: Sir, lots of people have come to see me about fear. I’m taking the part of the man who comes to you, and says, ‘Please, don’t talk all this highfalutin stuff, come down to earth and help me to be free of this monster. And you have nothing to say to me!

RG: No, that’s not true.
1:21:18 K: Say, tell me!
1:21:20 RS: Then I would say, say I am a Christian, Evangelical, and I am in fact a Christian. Sorry to shock anyone. I would say in answer to that there are answers to this problem which are given by this religion, this faith, and by prayer.
1:21:43 K: Ah, I don’t accept all that.
1:21:46 RS: You said you’re the ordinary man. Many ordinary men do accept it.
1:21:50 K: I have been through prayers, devotion, the whole lot.
1:21:55 RS: Then you’re an extraordinary man.
1:22:01 K: You see what they do with me? You see how they push me off? I don’t accept all that. They’re only substitutes for fear. Wait, let me finish. They are just surrogate to something burning me. I say, ‘Don’t tell me to pray, don’t tell me about the Bible, don’t tell me about the Upanishad. I don’t want any of that. I am a very sceptical man.
1:22:40 RG: The Christian Bible would require acceptance of that self-description. Then what would you do?
1:22:49 RS: I don’t know. This is a hypothetical example. Far from being the ordinary, I think these cases are rare. I think confronted with such a case, I don’t know what one would do.
1:23:02 K: That’s all I want you to tell me. ‘I don’t know what to do with you’. Ah, no, stop there. Stop there. You say, ‘My dear chap, I can’t, I don’t know what to do, because I myself haven’t resolved it’.
1:23:19 RS: No, I wouldn’t say that.

K: Wait!
1:23:24 RG: Surely you would in relation to such a question.
1:23:29 K: You see the game they’re playing with me? I won’t accept this game. I won’t accept the ball in my court. It’s in your court. R

S: All right. I have to accept the ball in my court then. What I would say is I don’t know the answer, but I would pray...
1:23:50 K: If you don’t know the answer, tell me.
1:23:53 RS: I will say I don’t know the answer.
1:23:54 K: That’s all.
1:23:56 RS: I would then say there’s the possibility of an answer...
1:23:59 K: I’m not interested in the possibility. All that you can tell me is, ‘My dear chap, I don’t know’.
1:24:09 RS: No, I think I do know.

K: Then, tell me.
1:24:14 RS: The problem is you don’t accept my answer. You say, ‘I don’t accept all that’.
1:24:20 K: Of course, I’ve tried all those.
1:24:24 RS: I might reply that maybe you haven’t tried...
1:24:27 K: That’s a trick of the priests, I won’t accept that. ‘You haven’t tried enough’.
1:24:33 RS: But it’s the trick the sceptic to reject all things in all ways. I could ask that question, couldn’t I? If you said, ‘I’ve tried all this’, I could at least inquire. I’m not a priest, so it wouldn’t strictly be a priestly trick. I might inquire in what ways have you tried, what sort of trial.
1:25:01 K: I know what I have done, all the human things we do. I have tried to escape, I have tried to suppress it, I have tried to transmute it by thinking about something else, I have tried to rationalise it, I have tried prayer, I have tried going to Sudarshan and asking him what science tells me, I’ve been to the analyst, I’ve done all the human tricks. At the end of the day, I say, ‘I’m stuck where I am – I am afraid’.
1:25:44 RG: Will you permit me to respond to your question?
1:25:53 RS: No, I’ve got nothing more to add, at present.
1:25:58 RG: Krishnaji, if you were to in that extraordinarily moving fashion...
1:26:05 K: It’s not moving, it’s dreadful.

RG: It’s moving to me. You must accept my response, also. I find it dreadful and moving. I would say in the light of what I understand, that this simply cannot be you speaking, because...
1:26:26 K: I didn’t hear it.
1:26:31 RG: That in you, to which you attribute all this fear, that, in you, to which you attribute all this fear, is not ultimately real. I’d like to know if you’ve tried that. Then I’d like to hear from you. If you have really tried and rejected the thought that, that in me, to which I attribute this radical misery, is at bottom unreal. If you have tried and rejected that, I would like to learn from you.
1:27:12 K: That’s just an idea. To me, that is the bottom. Fear is, to me, the bottom of all my life.
1:27:22 RG: Yes, but this ‘you’...

K: You may call it – basically, at the bottom there is no fear. Basically. Fear may be superficial, an illusion, but deep down there is no fear. I’ve touched the bottom of my life.
1:27:44 RG: No, I’m saying that you have not touched the bottom of yourself.
1:27:48 K: Myself is fear. I’ve touched that blasted thing.
1:27:52 RG: But you have not called the bluff of the ego.
1:27:56 K: That is me! I am the ego.

RG: But that’s the ego speaking. You haven’t called the bluff of that style of announcement of the ego which is its cleverest trick.

K: What do you call bluff?
1:28:07 RG: That you are not real, this subject of this total misery is not really me. It is a pretender.
1:28:16 K: I don’t go in for that. I say that is me.
1:28:20 RG: No, but I want to know if you have you tried this.
1:28:25 K: I’ve tried that. It’s just a verbal statement, which has no reality.
1:28:31 RG: But supposing I were to ask you, who is this, as Ramana used to ask... No, why not, because you’ve come to me for help, and you may reject it but not before receiving it.
1:28:46 K: I’ve heard all this.
1:28:49 RG: You haven’t heard it from me. Supposing I say, ‘Krishnaji, why don’t you simply ask yourself who you are, who is in this radical way miserable, really, really go into this yourself.
1:29:09 K: I’ve inquired that. I said, who am I? Am I fear or am I different from fear – right? – I say there is no difference between me and fear, I am fear.
1:29:27 RG: Is that the real you?
1:29:32 K: That is real to me.
1:29:34 RG: Is that the only you?

K: That is me.
1:29:38 K: The other me is conceit, the other me is arrogance, the other me is feeling loneliness.
1:29:46 RG: This family of ‘me’s’, is that the only family?
1:29:48 K: That’s all I know.
1:29:51 RG: I would be the sceptic now, and question whether you really know.
1:29:56 K: Don’t question...

RG: I must leave it at that.
1:29:59 K: I am saying, if you’ll forgive me, there is nothing but fear in me.
1:30:07 RG: I don’t deny that, but I am not sure if there is only that you in you.
1:30:11 K: I told you, I’m also... I’ve tremendous aspirations, tremendous feeling of guilt, I’m also vain, arrogant, full of fun, if I wanted, and also I’m guilty – I am all the human things. I say I’m also the ultra-superior entity. I include all that you have said to me, I am that.
1:30:48 RG: You can’t really say that, because that ultra-superior entity is not the ego which glories in its superiority. So, as the sceptic, I’d say, ‘Krishnaji, your ego is playing tricks with itself’.
1:31:04 K: All right, it’s playing tricks with itself.
1:31:06 RG: It is reducing the true answer to a caricature.
1:31:10 K: It may be playing tricks with itself, but at the end of the day, I’m still with that burden of fear.
1:31:19 PJ: Sir, may I say one thing? You have been asking this question. I come to you, and ask, ‘Tell me how to be free of fear’.
1:31:30 K: I will tell you.

PJ: Tell me.
1:31:34 K: But you don’t come that way to me.
1:31:36 PJ: I am coming.
1:31:46 K: What I was trying to point out is, you don’t help me that way. I’ll show you.

PJ: Show me.
1:32:01 K: Have you time?
1:32:04 PJ: I have time.

AP: Yes, sir.
1:32:06 K: Aha. Not by the watch. Have you time?
1:32:13 PJ: Yes.

K: Right.
1:32:16 K: Would you admit desire is part of fear?
1:32:22 PJ: Obviously.
1:32:25 K: Time is part of fear, thought is part of fear? So, these are the three basic elements of fear. Right? Then you have to see what is desire. We know that. You and I have talked about it. So I can skip that. Agree? Must you and I go into the question of desire?
1:32:57 PJ: No, but I think you should open it up a bit more.
1:33:01 K: All right. Desire is the beginning of thought when it creates the image out of the sensation. You accept that?

PJ: Yes. Obviously, if you look into yourself...
1:33:28 K: You have asked me if you can be free of fear, and I say that is the beginning of fear, one of the elements of fear, that desire. Desire is when thought takes charge of sensation and creates the image out of that sensation.
1:33:53 K: Right?

PJ: Yes.
1:33:56 K: Then time is part of fear.

PJ: Yes.
1:34:01 K: That is the future, or the past.

PJ: Fear is the future.
1:34:07 K: Yes, and also the past. Fear of having done something which is not correct, which is not honourable. I’m using this word, forgive me. Right? So, time is fear. That is, hope is part of fear. Right? Then thought is part of fear. Thinking of the future, which is time plus thought is the movement of fear. These are the basic causes of fear. Where there is a cause, there is an end to that effect. Right, sir? So, have I really grasped the deep significance of desire? Not discipline desire, not control desire, but how desire arises. And before thought takes charge of sensation, to be aware of that hiatus between sensation and thought interfering. Are you capturing all this? Do you get what I am saying? I see a beautiful woman or beautiful something, it is natural sensation, and to be so utterly attentive at that moment, so thought doesn’t make an image out of that sensation and pursue that. Am I making this clear?

Q: Yes, yes.
1:36:42 K: To be so alert, so thought doesn’t interfere with sensation.
1:36:54 PJ: Fear arises.
1:36:55 K: No, these are the causes of fear. Wait, wait. Let me finish. So that you understand the full movement of desire, where thought doesn’t come into sensation and make a lovely image out of it. That is the beginning of desire, which is the cause of fear. Would you agree to that, sir? Right. Then time is fear, which is a very complex – time, there is no... I am time. My thought is time. I am the past, the present and the future. I am the time-maker. Since I am the time-maker, I am bound to time, in bondage to time. Right? Right? It’s not just words, this thing has to be in my blood. Then I say, thought. These three are the basic movement of fear. Thought, which projects the future. Thought, you know what it is. If you have understood – not understood, if you have grasped the fullness of it, there is no fear at all.
1:38:55 RB: Sir, it seems to me that there is a primordial fear in which there is no conscious time, thought or desire.
1:39:10 K: Primordial fear?

RB: Primordial, in the sense of something which seems to come from an ancient past, from the unknown – the fear of not being.
1:39:21 K: Yes, that is it. That fear of being is time. Being is time – right, sir? – and not being is time. When I’ve understood, when that is in my breath, there is no fear.
1:39:48 RB: No, I think there is some difference. I see something beautiful, there is sensation...
1:39:55 K: That is all – sensation. Stop there. Stop there.
1:39:59 RB: No, I’m just trying to analyse it. There is sensation. Then thought makes an image. Already, time has come into being.
1:40:07 K: That is, thought is time. Thought is not separate from time. They are both movements. Therefore that is time. Time, thought are not different.
1:40:21 RB: Yes, I see that. But I think there is a fear where there is no such movement. It seems to come from some deep...
1:40:36 K: I won’t accept any primordial, deep down. This is the only fear I have – the unknown and the known.
1:40:50 RG: Krishnaji, so long as you have not given up the thought that you are the proper subject of time, thought and desire, this fear may come back. Or it may come back.
1:41:04 K: Aha. Just a minute, sir.

RG: No, let me complete.
1:41:07 K: Sorry.
1:41:09 RG: So long as the thought is there in your mind, that you were the absolutely legitimate recipient of this, there may be a temporary relief. It may be of a splendid kind, while it lasts, so long as you haven’t seen that you are not this body or that you are not at all – just a minute – if you are just overcome by a process of analysis at a given point in time.
1:41:43 K: No, sir. You are assuming – forgive me, I may be wrong – you are assuming something beyond my comprehension, that there is primordial freedom, primordial divinity or something. I merely go from fact to fact, the fact as it happens.
1:42:11 RG: Yes. But, if I may say so, I think it is presumptuous to suggest there shall be no fear. There is no more presumption in what I have suggested. But I think neither is presumptuous.
1:42:28 K: I don’t understand what you are saying.
1:42:30 RG: Well, it’s my fault. Let me try again. Let me try again. It’s my fault, assuredly. In your wonderfully helpful conversation, just now, you said that if you can see that this is the movement of fear – splendid phrase – thought, desire, time then fear shall end. Now, this proclamation or prospect that fear shall end can sound very presumptuous to people, precisely in the way in which the thought, that this illusory ‘I’ which regards itself as the proper subject of all this, will cease. They are on the same level, and not really presumptions at all. They are really these two margas. I think what you presented, now, I think it is about time that the complementarity be explored, rather than a mutual rift sustained. The moment the essential movement of fear is seen, at that very moment, the ego dies.
1:43:55 K: I am that, sir. I am desire, I am thought, I am time. I am that.
1:44:01 RG: But if you are still there, the news isn’t good enough.
1:44:05 PJ: May I say one thing? This movement which has been explored, the ‘I’ is not separate from that movement.
1:44:17 K: That’s it.
1:44:21 PJ: When a statement is made that fear ends, this movement ends, and with the ending of this movement, time ends – in his sense. Now, the question which I think would be relevant would be, with the ending of that, is there the void of nothingness? After all, this is the veil, this is the illusion. When you talk without even making the statement of that, the illusion which hides, if you say that there is this super light, there’s something which is covering that light, what is covering the light is this movement.
1:45:20 RG: Is it also the ego, Pupulji? If the ego survives this cessation, that’s not good enough news.
1:45:28 PJ: Can it survive?
1:45:31 RG: If it doesn’t, then the other marga, other path, other movement was never real at all.
1:45:39 PJ: But if you start from saying it is not real, you will never see this.
1:45:45 RG: I think the two must go side by side. All I’m suggesting is – this is a crude phrase – we put all our resources together. The actual undertaking of this marvellous process, briefly, but so powerfully introduced by Krishnaji, and the conviction for those who share it, there are millions who do, that this ego was never real anyway. I think the two can go together, and in a pincer movement, bring freedom. But if you pursue only one in unfortunate rejection of the other, then that would be a false move.
1:46:27 PJ: That would take a great deal of discussion, to go into these two...
1:46:33 AP: I would just like to say that we get the constituents. When we get the constituents, what is the importance of the name? After all, when we use the word ‘ego’, it is a concept. Now, I get the constituents, and I say that time is the factor of fear. I brood over it, ponder over it, because it is the toughest nut to crack. Then I hear that thought is fear. When I get each of the constituents and I examine each of them, and I’m very critical, very sceptical, and I say that each of the constituents has validity because it is part of my being. It is not external, as well as not internal, it is. It is. When I have said this, is there any meaning left to naming? If I have examined the parts, is there any meaning attached to naming? Because then I have to get rid of naming.
1:48:18 RG: Supposing I were to say, not with the authority of a gnani... Supposing I were to say ego is fear.
1:48:31 K: It is. Ego is fear. This is the first time I’m hearing this word from you, today. But I think if it came with the authority of Krishnaji...
1:48:40 K: Qu’est ce qu’il dit? I am sorry.
1:48:43 RG: This phrase, that the ego is fear, today I heard from you for the first time.
1:48:48 RG: If you were now to address this sentence, along with the other three. I’m addressing Krishnaji. Please, give me one minute. What I suggested in a clumsy way, has now been unclumsied by you in that simple phrase, ‘the ego is fear’. One should then begin with this, that naming is fearing. Achyutji, supposing one begins with this thought, also, one has to go through this movement of overcoming the movement. In addition to the mantras, I will regard the statements – thought is fear, desire is fear, time is fear, as three mantras. Supposing you have the fourth, ‘the ego is fear’, I think that is almost like the four Vedas.
1:49:38 K: I don’t know what you’re saying.
1:49:41 RG: But I think you need the fourth Veda, also.
1:49:43 AP: We won’t enter into semantics.
1:49:46 RG: But you’re talking about naming, you can’t deny semantics.
1:49:51 AP: For the time being, we have moved along a certain line, and we have come up to that point, if we also give up naming at that point, does it not leave us at a point which Pupulji has very validly raised, where are you, then? Is there a void? It’s a very important question.
1:50:20 RG: Why anticipate the void? If you were sceptical about naming, then I think your capacity to give it up will be greater.
1:50:27 PJ: Naming is very much part of this.
1:50:29 RG: So, the fourth mantra, please, the ego is fear. I insist on bringing it into the discussion.
1:50:35 PJ: But I won’t enter into it. But I want to tell Krishnaji that there is a fifth element which may be unrelated to these four, but is being stated by Krishnaji, that there is meditation of the universe. There is a meditation of the universe, with the ending of this. Now, can you take all this together?
1:51:21 AP: I would have paraphrased her in another word. My only excuse for speaking is that it might be helpful. I say that when you have arrived at that point, there is the non-divisive existence.
1:51:42 K: These are all words, darlings.
1:51:45 GS: Krishnaji, I realise the time is practically up, but I would like to say that this is like the... If somebody came to me and said, ‘I am in mortal fear’, I would first say, ‘My friend, I can’t help you, but please tell me’. Probably I would have gone along the way, not so clearly, not so specifically. However, I wonder how many common people can benefit from such a thing. Wouldn’t they say, ‘Krishnaji, you’re a great man, but these are words. I am in tremendous fear, I’m in agony. Please, help me. Don’t tell me all these semantics.

K: I won’t tell him all this.
1:52:28 GS: What will you do?

K: Hold his hand.